Just heard back from the media and public relations people at the Canadian Space Agency. They have a number of Canadian Astronauts they said they are willing to try and connect with us who will be at the KSC. So excited!! Just trying to work out the logistics now.

We are just waiting to hear back from a few other requests that we’ve sent out. I have one outstanding with the Smithsonian, which includes a film permission request we sent out, a contact at the Space Walk of Fame in Titusville, and specifically to Mark Garneau, former Canadian Astronaut and current Member of Parliament in the Canadian Federal Liberal Party.

We have started vlogging for the site as well. Two first entries are finished with more to come as we prep for STS 135 as well as posts while we are en route! The first two will up today.

It’s been a few months since we first conceived of Chasing Atlantis. Watching Endeavour land for the last time earlier in the Spring made the end of the Shuttle Program quite real to me. I began reflecting on how often I was inspired by the launches, the shots from orbit, the astronauts themselves.

I awoke in the middle of the night one evening. At night, my room fluoresces blue from a strand of LED lights that run across the length of my door. unfocused to my unaided eyes I stared at the wall hazy blue and realized I was mid thought in an idea; the kind of idea you are not sure coalesced either in a dream or within the stupor of just having awoken or somewhere in the threshold between awake and asleep where the mind finds a unique freedom of creativity. Though the lights unfocused, the thought was clear; I want to take a group with me to Florida, and I want to put it on film. And the reason I wanted to put it on film was because the group I wanted to take to Florida couldn’t possibly be large enough for me; I want to bring everybody.

The steps we’ve taken since that night have led us down amazing paths. We’ve been able to talk to the PR and Media Relations team at NASA and similar departments at the Smithsonian and we’ve made some great connections with members of the Space Walk of Fame in Titusville Perhaps the most amazing connection so far was a completely unexpected one. Paul, our primary videographer and director for the film, went into get his A/C repaired on his car. When speaking to the dealership owner, it turned out the owner was friends with former KSC Director James W. Kennedy. The dealer showed Paul some of the shuttle memorabilia that was given to him by James.

Alongside forming connections with people who can help us tell our story, we have spent the past few weeks trying to secure tickets to see the launch viewing. This proved to be a most difficult task. We threw in as many e-mails as we could into the KSCtickets lottery pool. Unfortunately none of us were selected. Second, we tried to purchase tickets from Gray Line and Dolphin Tours today with no success. Both websites seemed to crash around 11:55am EST and hasn’t been up since. I managed to get to a checkout cart once, but the sale kept timing out. We’ll have to see if we can find tickets through another channel. If not, we’ll watch alongside the thousands of awesome people who will gather in Titusville alongside local residents to watch the historic occasion and tell their story as well.

We will keep everybody posted as we continue to prepare for our journey to Florida and I do hope that, through our project, we can connect with you, the wider audience of space fans, sci-fi geeks, astronomers, artists….anybody who believes in a small world of people who are capable of huge things in a huge universe.

The start of space shuttle Atlantis’ tanking test today will be later than originally scheduled due to storms that moved through the area of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center yesterday afternoon and evening.

Filling of Atlantis’ external fuel tank with more than 500,000 gallons of super cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen now is set to begin at about 11 a.m. EDT.

Initial reports indicated that the storms produced three lightning strikes within a quarter mile of Launch Pad 39A, but preliminary assessments show no damage to either Atlantis or the pad. Engineers are reviewing data to confirm that assessment.